I heard about this a few weeks ago and now it’s officially launched – Facebook’s New Photo Viewer. Now when you click a photo, a modal window/dialog (or Lightbox as most people call it) will popup.
I think Facebook calls it the ‘Theater‘, cos I saw this in the URL after the modal box popped up – ‘http://www.facebook.com/?closeTheater=1#!/azharkamar‘ .
Is the new Facebook Photo Viewer a good thing?
Obviously the pros of this new feature overwhelm the cons because you don’t have to be directed to a new page whenever you click a photo and with that, loading time is significantly minimized. Well that’s what a modal window is supposed to do anyway, besides enhancing the user interface design.
Personally, I think it’s a great usability enhancement for Facebook but I would like to change a few things pertaining to design if I could:
- the main background should be a translucent white color, instead of black
- the background color behind the photo in the modal window should be white
- the modal window should have a translucent black, thick, rounded corner border (similar to Facebook’s alert box design)
- remove the advertisements on the right
Also, Facebook should allow users to disable this Theater feature.
